James Riswick
Assistant A&E Editor
It’s not easy to feel sorry for celebrities. How can we sympathize with someone like Lindsey Lohan who’s become famous, loaded (in more ways than one) and has been given a lucrative recording contract simply by appearing in two or three Disney movies? I don’t care if she’s sick of rumors starting and just wants people to let her live — she’s rich and the life she wants to live is one we regular schmoes would be ecstatic to have.
So again, it’s not easy to feel sorry for celebrities. But it is possible thanks to the lowest form of life on Earth. Even cockroaches and those creepy insects in my basement with a hundred huge legs can rest assured that the paparazzi are lower than them on VH1’s upcoming “least useful creatures on Earth” list. Heck, even the word paparazzi comes from the Italian word ‘paparazzo,’ which means an annoying insect.
I once met a student who was simply beaming about the perks and privileges of his new job. He got to drive a nice car with all its expenses paid, and he was quite happy to boast about how great this gig was. The job, you ask? It was driving around the paparazzi here in Malibu.
“Well congratulations,” I wanted to say. “I’m sure the car is nice, but you’re a sleaze ball.”
His job was the same one that arguably got Princess Diana killed in 1997. A job that includes driving around photographers whose mission it is to capture celebrities doing everyday things, private things, illegal things and especially sexual things. They’re paid to take pictures of celebrity children and the occasional nipple slip (or if you’re Tara Reid, 10-minute nipple exhibition). They hide behind bushes, cars and whatever hole from which they crawled out.
Worst of all, they claim to be actual journalists. Oh yes, real journalists are always on the look-out for the hottest scoops on such Earth-shattering news as Julia Roberts takes Phinnaeus and Hazel for a walk, Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart are seen in a restaurant, George Clooney owns a big boat or Jessica Simpson looks really skinny in this picture.
Yes these people are public figures (pervasive ones to be legally correct), but they do deserve to have at least something resembling a private life.
Now, U.S. law protects paparazzi to take pictures of celebrities while they are in public. That was reaffirmed 30 years ago in a case involving Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and a photographer who was harassing her family incessantly. Legally, the paparazzi cannot be guilty of invasion of privacy as long as there was no reasonable expectation of privacy on the part of the person being photographed. A restaurant is a public place, so Harrison and Calista are out of luck. If a celebrity is skinny dipping in their back yard, then they too are out of luck — there’s no reasonable expectation of privacy there either.
Although there is a California law that bars photographing people engaged in a “familial moment” in a private setting, proving what a “familial moment” is could be tricky.
So the paparazzi are protected legally for the most part, but ethically they are garbage.
When a celebrity objects to having their picture taken, one often hears a paparazzo emphatically exclaiming, “Hey, I’m just doing my job!” Yeah, well Nazi soldiers were just doing their jobs too. Someone is not justified in doing something despicable simply because they are able to make a living doing it.
Sure, I bet being a paparazzo makes good money and driving them around brings a few perks, but they also have to live with the fact that they are scum and make money by harassing others and invading their lives.
As awful as the paparazzi are, though, it is the public that is ultimately to blame. Every time somebody watches VH1, or buys a tabloid, People magazine or celebrity rag/toilet paper Us Weekly, they are saying that they think the paparazzi’s behavior is acceptable. Society is pathetically saying that we need to see pictures of Brad and Jen post-break up, or Gwyneth burping Apple, or Mary-Kate entering a treatment facility, or Lindsey Lohan fully loaded in a New York dance club.
But really people, who bleeping cares? Maybe if we took Miss Lohan’s advice and just let her live, these paparazzi would be out of work and back in the sewer where they belong. And perhaps best of all, microscopic talents like Lohan, Paris Hilton, Tara Reid and Britney Spears will no longer be able to become celebrities simply because they say so and by having their picture taken.
1-27-2005
